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Sheraton on the Park,
Sydney, Australia
Best for: Speedy internet
Why? Sheraton’s 18 meeting
rooms can accommodate
10 to 1600 people. It also has
a hi-def videoconferencing
room, so you can check back
in with the boss before
collapsing on the hotel bed.
www.starwoodhotels.com.
The Langham, Xintiandi,
Shanghai, China
Best for: Bang for your buck
Why? Complimentary
international Skype calling,
daily breakfast, all wireless
room services plus one-way
airport limo transfer and two
upgrades for every 15 rooms
booked. Book the Grand
Ballroom and you can even
monitor your event via CCTV.
xintiandi.langhamhotels.com.
The Farm at Cape
Kidnappers, NZ
Best for: Luxury
Why? Remote, yet accessible
(Napier airport is a 40-minute
drive away), The Farm is set
on 2400 hectares in stunning
Hawke’s Bay. Take over the
22 suites and a four-bedroom
cottage for your next
end-of-year meeting. www.
capekidnappers.com.
From a small roundtable brainstorm to a cocktail-party
product launch, meetings are intimate affairs often relegated
to just one particular industry, or even a single company.
GrEAT ThINGs, smAll pAckAGEs
While it’s easy to woo with tech gadgetry (and a free bar)
at a sprawling international convention, real decisions
are made when the body counts are low. Scott Berkun,
author of Mindfire: Big Ideas for Curious Minds and
Confessions of a Public Speaker, suggests you always
formulate three levels of depth to pitching an idea
at a meeting: five seconds, 30 seconds, five minutes.
The first, also known as the elevator pitch, is the most
concise single-sentence formulation of whatever your
idea is. No, yours is not too complicated to refine; even
something as involved as discovering DNA can be
reduced to “I’m researching how human cells reproduce”.
If you can’t distil down what you’re doing, odds are you
won’t get many people to listen to you for five minutes.
The 30-second and
five-minute versions should
grow naturally out of your
one-sentence wonder. In
30 seconds, there’s enough
time to talk about how you’ll
achieve your goal, or provide
specifics on two or three of
your pitch’s most significant aspects. Five minutes
will allow you to provide the next level of information,
elaborating with just enough interesting detail that gives
the listener a deeper and more nuanced understanding
of what you’re proposing.
Finally, get yourself a wingman. It doubles your
network and changes your pitching psychology.
Instead of standing alone, you’ll be a small team, and
may even outnumber the person you’re pitching to. ▶
(m)eetings
Best hotels
sheraton on the Park,
sydney, Australia
Always have a wingman to increase your
network and make it easier to present a pitch.
the langham,
Xintiandi, shanghai
the Farm at Cape Kidnappers,
North Island, New Zealand
Make booking your next MICe venue
a cinch at www.meetings.accorhotels.
com, which lets you choose from more
than 1200 properties around the world.
TopTIp
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